The Quarto and Folio Editions

Introduction

Before Shakespeare became a literary monument taught in classrooms around the world, he was a working playwright whose scripts circulated among actors, companies, and printers. In Shakespeare’s time, plays were not seen as permanent literature. The theatre valued performance over preservation, and printed playbooks were often considered disposable entertainment.

Yet, thanks to two major types of printed editions — the quarto and the folio — Shakespeare’s works survived. These books did far more than simply record his words. They shaped how later generations interpreted him, created puzzles for scholars, and even altered our understanding of his characters and plots.

The story of the quartos and folios is ultimately the story of how Shakespeare became Shakespeare.

The Quarto and Folio Editions

Shakespeare’s plays first reached readers through two main types of early printed books — the modest quartos and the grand folio editions. These formats shaped how his works were preserved, altered, and ultimately passed down to us.

Understanding the difference between them reveals how Shakespeare moved from the stage to the page, and how fragile the survival of his texts truly was.

What Exactly Is a Quarto?

A quarto is a small book created by folding a single sheet of paper twice, producing eight pages. These books were portable, affordable, and ideal for popular literature.

Printers loved quartos because they were quick to produce. Playgoers loved them because they were cheap. But their quality varied enormously.

There were several types of quartos:

1. Good Quartos

• Printed from reliable manuscripts
• Likely authorized by the theatre company
• More accurate and polished

Examples include:

• Romeo and Juliet (1599 Q2)
• Much Ado About Nothing (1600)
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1600)

These versions are often closest to what Shakespeare wrote.

2. Bad Quartos

These are the notorious “pirated” editions printed without permission. They may have been:

• Reconstructed from actors’ memories
• Copied by audience members taking notes
• Set from flawed or incomplete manuscripts

They sometimes include:

• Shortened scenes
• Rewritten speeches
• Clumsy, non-Shakespearean phrasing
• Missing soliloquies

The best-known example is Hamlet (1603 Q1) — a much shorter, often awkward version scholars nicknamed the “bad quarto.”

It contains lines like:
“To be, or not to be — ay, there’s the point.”

instead of
“To be, or not to be — that is the question.”

Bad quartos show us just how uncertain the transmission of Shakespeare’s text could be.

What Is a Folio?

A folio is a large, impressive book made by folding a sheet of paper once, creating two leaves (four pages). It was the most prestigious format of the period — typically reserved for Bibles, major histories, and serious scholarship.

Shakespeare’s First Folio, printed in 1623, was a monumental effort led by his fellow actors John Heminges and Henry Condell. They claimed to base the texts on Shakespeare’s “true original copies,” likely a mixture of:

• Promptbooks
• Authorial papers
• Company manuscripts

The First Folio included 36 plays, organized into:

• Comedies
• Histories
• Tragedies

It helped establish Shakespeare’s reputation as a literary writer — not merely an entertainer.

Plays Saved by the First Folio

Eighteen of Shakespeare’s plays would have been lost forever if not for the First Folio. These include:

• Macbeth
• The Tempest
• Twelfth Night
• Julius Caesar
• Measure for Measure
• Antony and Cleopatra

Without Heminges and Condell, half of Shakespeare’s dramatic output might have disappeared.

Differences Between Quartos and Folios

The plays often differ remarkably between editions. Some differences are small — spelling, punctuation, or line breaks. Others are dramatic:

• Entire scenes appear in one edition but not the other.
• Characters speak different lines.
• Stage directions change relationships or motivations.
• Length can differ by hundreds of lines.

The most famous case is King Lear, which exists in:

• A significantly different Quarto
• A significantly different Folio

Some modern editors print them separately as King Lear (Q) and King Lear (F), while others combine them into a hybrid text.

These differences remind us that Shakespeare’s plays were living documents, shaped by performance, memory, and the printing process.

How Printing Worked — And Why It Caused Problems

Elizabethan printing was a laborious process:

• Type was set by hand
• Pages were printed in batches
• Errors were corrected mid-run
• Printers reused damaged or worn type
• Spelling and punctuation were inconsistent

A single page might contain errors introduced by:

• The compositor (the typesetter)
• The scribe who copied the manuscript
• The actor recalling lines incorrectly
• The printer rushing to meet demand

This means no two copies of a quarto — and sometimes even no two pages — are identical.

Why Shakespeare Did Not Supervise Publication

Unlike poets, playwrights rarely oversaw printed editions of their work. Reasons include:

• Companies treated plays as proprietary material
• Printed copies risked rival companies stealing scripts
• Shakespeare prioritized performance and new writing
• Plays were seen as commercial, not literary

Ironically, this lack of supervision contributed to the textual chaos modern editors now face.

The Second, Third, and Fourth Folios

After the First Folio, three more folios appeared in:

• 1632
• 1663
• 1685

Each introduced additional revisions:

• Corrected misprints
• Added new stage directions
• Modernized spelling
• Inserted or removed lines

Some later folios even included plays Shakespeare did not write, like Pericles (partially Shakespearean) and Locrine (not Shakespearean at all). This shows how quickly Shakespeare’s canon became a mixture of tradition, assumption, and editorial choice.

Analysis

The history of Shakespeare’s quartos and folios reveals something essential about the nature of his works — they were not born perfect or fixed. They evolved through performance, collaboration, error, interpretation, and the practical realities of early modern printing.

Quartos capture the vibrancy of the original theatrical world. They show Shakespeare’s plays as living scripts used by actors, sometimes hastily recorded, sometimes artfully preserved. Their imperfections give us glimpses of the stage in motion — cuts for performance, actors’ memories, and the fluidity of the theatrical craft.

Folios represent preservation, authority, and a desire to elevate Shakespeare to literary status. They stabilized the plays and saved half of them from extinction. Yet even the Folio is not definitive — it reflects the choices of actors recalling their performances, editors imposing structure, and printers shaping the text.

Together, quartos and folios tell a story of collaboration and chance. Shakespeare’s survival was not guaranteed. It depended on printers, actors, booksellers, editors, and readers across centuries who believed the plays were worth keeping alive.

It is this long chain of preservation — not just Shakespeare’s genius — that allows us to read and perform his works today.